Very Good Sentences

From Megan McArdle, on the new Arizona Immigration Law:

I'd be a lot more sympathetic to this law, in fact, if it required the police to check the immigration status of every single person they pulled over, without any gauzy "reason to believe" fig leaf to cover up what's really going on.

Raise your hand if you think that law could have passed in Arizona.

My hand is down, by the way.

Eye of the Beholder

I see this story in the NYT as another reason not to have state-sponsored health care. I suppose others may see it as a reason to have state sponsored health care, depending on their view of immigration:

Dr. Bernhard Moeller moved to Australia with his wife and three children nearly three years ago when he was hired to work as a specialist at a rural hospital in the southern state of Victoria.

The family decided to apply for permanent residency, but were appalled when their application was rejected this month because Dr. Moeller’s 13-year-old son, Lukas, has Down syndrome.

Australia has a longstanding policy of weighing medical conditions in its residency decisions. Any applicant deemed to have a condition that would incur significant costs to the state-run health care system must be rejected under Australia’s immigration laws.

Ahhh, the compassionate system we get to look forward to in the U.S.

Hat Tip: Philippe Legrain

U.K. Government-Approved Occupation Shortage List

The U.K.'s Ministry of Borders and Immigration has decided what market shortages exist in thier domain, and what they will need more of in the future from immigrants. Find the complete report here. Philippe Legrain provides the highlights (I resist the temptation to Americanize the spelling):

• sheep shearers (but only if they hold the British Wool Marketing Board bronze medal or equivalent);
• frozen fish filleters (but only in Scotland);
• theatre nurses (but not midwives);
• veterinary surgeons (but not other veterinarians);
• chefs (but only those paid at least £8.10 an hour);
• ballet dancers (but not choreographers, or other dancers).

Stiffling Housing Demand

If this was KPC, the title of this post would be something like "Housing Demand: yer doin' it wrong!"

Anyway, many have suggested that allowing more immigration to help prop up housing prices as a possibility to help slow the spread of foreclosures. However, according to Miriam Jordan of the WSJ the U.S. is doing precisely the opposite (Hat Tip to Philippe Legrain for the article pointer):

Dubbed ITIN mortgages, the loans that made homeownership a reality for thousands of undocumented workers have withered -- although not because they underperformed.

The loan program highlights contradictions in U.S. polices toward illegal immigrants. Even as the Department of Homeland Security sought to deport them, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. goaded banks and credit unions to bring undocumented immigrants into mainstream banking if they could prove they had steady income and were creditworthy. Beginning in 2003, when banks and credit unions first offered mortgages to undocumented immigrants, the small segment blossomed. The mortgages performed better than some others, partly because of stringent lending criteria and because they usually had fixed rates over a period of time.
...
But amid the crackdown on illegal immigration and the economic slowdown, the market for immigrants who boast the alternative nine-digit taxpayer ID is dying.
"If you want to buy a house and you're here without papers, now you can forget it," says Jesus Benitez, a real-estate agent who caters to Hispanics in Brooklyn.
...
Bank of Bartlett, a small bank that serves the greater Memphis area, endured the "political heat," says John Byrd, president of Bartlett Mortgages, a unit of the Tennessee bank. "We felt we were doing the right thing; these people had been working here many years and paying taxes." All told, the small bank originated about $20 million in ITIN mortgages over four years, each worth about $100,000. Less than 5% of Bank of Bartlett's ITIN loans are delinquent. Nationally, for loans more than 90 days in arrears, ITIN mortgages had a delinquency rate of about 0.5% last year, compared with 9.3% for subprime mortgages, according to independent estimates.
...
Unwilling to shoulder the risk alone, Bank of Bartlett and others began withdrawing from the ITIN home-loan market -- though they continue to service their current clients.

The Terrible Dangers in Protecting Culture: French Edition

Philippe Legrain provides an English translation for this French article:

A 32-year old Moroccan woman, who is married to a Frenchman and has 3 children who were born in France, has had her normally automatic request for French citizenship denied for wearing a burqa, which France's constitutional council deems "incompatible with the fundamental values of the French community, and notably equality between men and women."

This could be viewed as the Orwellian possibilities for those who are proposing that we create a government ministry of "cultural rights."

Narrow View of Social Welfare

Samuleson writes about America's Economic Report Card:

Similarly, if the immigration of low-skilled workers continues unabated -- whether they're legal or illegal -- the ranks of the poor will swell, as will the uninsured or the costs of providing government insurance.

I'm not faulting Samuelson for reporting this way because he is discussing the interpretation of the report card, whose focus is on America. However, it gives the impression that social welfare is declining because low skilled immigrants move to the United States.

U.S. Poverty Statistics, no doubt, increase. A broader view though is that an immigrant crosses an imaginary line and experiences an almost automatic increase in their standard of living. They were poor before they made it into the United States, but broadening the view of social welfare to at least two countries (the immigrant's home country and the U.S.) demonstrates the actual effect, which is that a poor person is less poor than before.

Hat Tip: Mankiw

I Wouldn't Bother With This Either

A guide to being granted citizenship status for foreigners, by the Reason Foundation.

Mass Transit That Really Could Help The Economy

Commenters at the NYT's seem to believe that a mass transit system would help stimulate the economy. The commenters at Marginal Revolution have a lot of fun at their expense. However, this could actually help stimulate the economy...if it was built over the top of the forthcoming Mexican Border wall.

Questions I've Been Pondering (with Matt)...Immigration

Q: What would happen if the United States had a open-border policy on immigration? Pass a security check, register where you're going, and come on in. We continue citizenship constraints, so that it takes a long time to be eligible for government programs like welfare or to vote in elections, but other than that stay where you like as long as you like.

I think this would induce a massive push for economic and political reform around the world. Government power to exploit is derived from the immobility of its citizens. If the bridge club wants to impose an income tax on you, you can just quit the bridge club. If the federal government passes an income tax, it's comparatively harder for you to leave, especially if there no other countries accepting immigrants. (Hat Tip to Buchanan's Club Theory.)

Adopting this policy, I think there would be enormous pressure on other governments around the world to become "more like the U.S." with respect to political and economic freedoms in order to persuade the most skilled and beneficial citizens from leaving them for the U.S. This would be the most true for South and Central America, who have some existing institutions that can adopt change. Even if this did not happen and America just ended up with a much higher immigration rate, we would experience massive income growth as the number of brains in the economy increased. It probably would stimulate some favorable (though unpopular) institutional changes within the United States as well.

I think Matt didn't entirely agree, but I'll leave it to him to post in the comments. I anticipate some interesting comments on this one.